Before the Mongolian hordes could wreck havoc in the
Middle East and seal its destiny with the land of Shi’ite Persia, the Mongols were allies with the Christian Crusaders. The messianic
passions of the first millennial birthday of Jesusexploded
into the First Catholic Crusade after the complete destruction of
the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (Roman Catholic site of the Tomb
of Jesus) by the “Mad” Shi’ite Caliph of the Fatimid Caliphate of
Egypt.

The walled city of Jerusalem fell under the assault of
the Crusaders and the Knights Templars. This included the complete
genocide of the entire Jewish and Islamic population in Jerusalem . The anger of animosity and the rage for justice sealed
the fate of the Catholic Christians and the Muslims alike. The Crusader
States were formed as European dynasties in their greed for power
and control. Each individual dynastic state sought to proclaim
its land for the Vatican and the Pope.

Seven Jewish messiahs would rise and herald their “view”
of the time of the end. There also would also rise up a Muslim
anti-Christ in the powerful Kurdish warrior of Saladin the Great.
Yet the “appointed time” for the time of the end would have to wait
another thousand years.

Prior to the time when it appeared that the Mongolian
Il-Khanate hordes would destroy the whole landscape of the Middle
East including Palestine, there descended upon Palestine the Catholic
Christian Crusaders seeking to gain a permanent foothold in the Holy Land . There they establishedCrusader States in Jerusalem and in Roman Palestine. The finger of the Lord of hosts
would pour out His “chalice” upon the land in a mini-drama
that would later be recreated at the time of the end as the Vatican again seeks to re-assert its power and authority over the Holy Land .

Soon, Genghis and his son Ögedei
Khan would be seeking permanent control of Persia. One of the famous Mongolian generals who personally served under both Genghis
and his son Ögedei Khan,Chormaqan, was sent
to establish a Mongolian presence in the land of the ancient Persian Empire. We know of Chormaqan Noyan in “The Secret History of Mongol’s.” He
was a member of the famed elite troops called the keshik. They
were a lightning quick cavalry in specializedhorse
archer warfare that was perfected by the Mongols. In battle,
they would feint a retreat which was a move that gave
their opponents a false sense of confidence. Suddenly their
opponents found that they were surrounded by a shower of
arrows from the horse archer division that was shooting 350 yards
away on horseback.

Chormagan was sent to Persia by Ögedei Khanto finish up the conquest in 1230 of Persia first started by Genghis Khan who nearly destroyed the Khwarezmid Empire of Persia between the years of 1218-1223. As the Mongol hordes approached the
land of Persia, they were met by the Khwarezmids under their ruler,
Jalal ad-Din. The Islamic rule crumbled and the last of the Khwarezmid
Empire vanished from history.

Persian Khwarezmian Islamic Dynasty

·Anus
Tigin Ğarçai – 1077-1097

·Qutb
ad-Din Muhammad I – 1097-1127

·Ala ad-Din Aziz – 1127-1156

·II-Arslan – 1156-1172

·Sultan
Shah
– 1172-1193

·Ala ad-Din Tekish – 1172-1200

·Ala ad-Din Muhammad II – 1200-1220

·Jalal
ad-Din Mingburnu – 1220-1231

It was only thirty five years earlier (1187) when a young
Kurdish Muslim warriorwrestled the great prize of Palestine from the
hands of the Christian Crusader kings. Al-Malik al-Nāṣir Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf ibn
Ayyūbmore famously
known as “Saladin”returned
the city of Jerusalem back into the hands of Islamic rule when he captured Jerusalem on October 2, 1187 after 88 years of Crusader rule.

This
singular defeat against the Christian Crusaders came on the heels
of the May 1, 1187defeat of the crusaders at the Battle of Cresson, the defeat of Guy
of Lusignan, King of Jerusalem on July 4, 1187 at the Battle of Hattin and the Siege of Jerusalem on September 20, 1187.

Al-Hakim (Al-Ḥakīm bi-Amr Allah - 996-1021
CE)was the sixth Shi’ite Caliph of the Fatimid Dynasty in Egypt. Called the “Ruler by God’s Command”, he succeeded his father Abū Mansūr (Abū
Mansūr Nizār al-ˤAzīz)in 996 CE at the age of eleven. A child with an unstable and erratic personality, he soon became known as the “Mad Caliph” and as fate would be, would precipitate a chain of events that would cascade
from the European to the
Euro-Asian continents as wave after wave of papal inspired Christian Crusaders would descend upon the land of Palestine.

This was the first millennium since the birth of the Jewish messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. The Christian world was in anticipation
of catastrophic events of biblical proportions. For centuries the Jewish
people had
been living safely under the
ruling custody
of the Sunni Islamic caliphs. For the first time in Islamic history a Shi’ite Caliphate was now ruling as the Fatimid Shi’ite Caliphate in Cairo, Egypt (910 to 1171 CE).

Al-Hakimas
the child ruler of the only Shi’a Caliphate found that his rule
was consistently being opposed by the Sunni Abbāsid
Caliphate in Baghdad. They were using their influence to halt
the spread of Ismailism. This sect of Islamfollowed only the
rulership of the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad through the descendants
of the fourth
Righteous Caliph(first Shi’ite Immam),Ali (Ali ibn Abu Talib), who was married to the daughter
of the Prophet, Fatima Zahra.

The
Ismaili branch of Shi’ite Islam, differs
from the regular Shi’ite Islam, in that they do
not await the return of the Twelfth
“Hidden Imam” or the Mahdi, the Islamic Messiah as the “Twelvers”(Shi’a Islam) who believe that
the Twelfth Imam of the Shi’ites will return as the Islamic messiah
before the return of Isis ben Miriam (Jesus son
of Mary) will return as the messiah to the world.

The
Ismailissect, over the years, had been transformed from
the Persian
Assassins that were destroyed in Iran by the imperial Mongolian
invasion into Persia by Hualga Khan. Today under the leadership
of the 49th Imām of the Shia Imami
Ismaili Muslims, His Highness Prince
Karīm al-Ḥussaynī
Āgā Khān IVbetter known as Āgā
Khān IV. Under his leadership, he has brought the Muslim
religion in direct competition with modern internationalism
as they await the final the50th
Imam or Aga Khan V to herald
the final days as the Earth
Beast of Revelation.

Since
1957, this British philanthropist and renown horse breeder has
ruled as the Supreme Leader of the Ismaili Muslims from his
Anglemont Estates in Gouvieux, Oise, France. It is estimated that
there are between four and twenty million Ismailis around the world
today. For the first time in 1,300 years, the ancestral lineage
of the Aga Khanexperienced its first generational jump of
the Khanate succession. This is important in that the current
Aga Khan is the 49th successive Khan of the Ismaili
Islam. According to the prophecies of the Ismaili Muslims,
the 50th Khan will herald the coming of the Islamic
messiah.

According
to the will
of his grandfather, Sultan Muhammed Shah Aga Khan
or Āgā Khān III, he dictated:

Sultan Aga Khan III - “The fundamentally altered
conditions in the world in very recent years due to the great
changes that have taken place, including the discoveries of atomic
science, I am convinced that it is in the best interests of the
Shia Muslim [sic] Ismaili community that I should be succeeded by a
young man who has been brought up and developed during recent
years and in the midst of the new age, and who
brings a new outlook on life to his office."

The Aga Khan and the Ismaeli sect of Islam have entered
into the modern world not only with the onlydynastic
succession for the Muslim people to the Prophet
Muhammadbut the modern claim that only the Ismaili
Islamic sect have acontinuous genetic
succession from the first seven Imams of
Islam.

According
to Edward Burman,
the author of “The Assassins – Holy Killers
of Islam (1987)” gives this comparison between the ancient
Assassins with the present Aga Khan and revolutionary
fundamentalist Islamists today.

Edward Burman - "The theology and politics of
the revolutionary of genius Hasan-i Sabbah can in fact be seen as
the first original creation - both religious and political - of a
specifically Persian ethos after the conquest of the country of the
Arabs and consequent conversion to Islam. In this wider sense the thought
and doctrines of the inventor of the 'Assassins' may be said to have
an enduring influence in the religious and political life of the Middle East. This legacy is shared by both the Aga Khans and by
contemporary revolutionary groups in Lebanon and Persia."

It
was in 1011, the Sunnis and the Shi’ites erupted into a giant schism
that was called the Baghdad Manifesto. Through the Manifesto, numerous
Sunni as well as Shi’ite “Twelvers” genealogists and Islamic
legal juristssought to destroy the genealogical evidence
of the legitimacy of the Sacred Mohammedan-‘Alid
lineage of the Fàtimid rulers. They testified that the Fàtimids
(Fatimid Shi’a Caliphate in Cairo) were not actually descendants from
“The Prophet” but were descendants of an infidel Jew called
Ibn al-qaddah, A Munafiq.
In one major document, the Shi’ite diplomatic and missionary vehicle
called the Ismaili dawa was challenged by the Sunni Abbasid Caliph Al-Qàdir in Baghdad. Shi’ite Cairo was now
in a religious war with its sister Sunni Baghdad.

The blood oath rivalries between the Sunnis and the
Shi’ite Muslims became the breeding ground for the beginning of
the First Christian Crusade. This same blood-oath
continued to spread down through the centuries and emerged again
like the ancient legendary Phoenix that died in the fiery pyre
only to be resurrected as the modern insurgencies and the bloody
massacres in Baghdad. In the winter of 2006, the Shi’ite
Iranian’snewly resurrected dream of a renewed Shi’ite Caliphate began
to threaten the nation-building quest by the American
presidential administration of George W. Bush with the hoped to be western
oriented political leadership in Iraq.

Hundreds
of billions of dollars were spent to take down the brutal regime of the
secular Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein and establish a western friendly
oil-rich Islamic state in the heart of the Muslim Sandlands of the Middle East. This dream today of the rise of a Shi’ite Caliphate in Iran (ancient Persia)challenges the nation building quest of the western
globalists. Out of this east-west conflict we see again rise the
age old power and succession rivalries of who will lead the Islamic
people; the descendants of the Prophet
Muhammad (Shi’ites) or the followers of the Companions of
Muhammad (Sunnis).

In a
religious world known for its tolerance of citizens who did
not oppose its political rule since the beginning of the fourth Righteous
Islamic Caliph Ali in 657 CE, the Jewish people were
protected while they were “in the wilderness” by their Islamic
rulers. The Jewish
people were preserved for 1260 years(657 to 1917 CE) and given the freedom to practice their
religion without interference by their Muslim overlords.

With
the fall of the Turkish Ottoman Empire in 1917 and the announcement
of the Balfour
Agreement by the British Prime Minister Lord Arthur James Balfour
that a “gentile nation” would seek to prepare a home for the Jews in Palestine, the 1260 year prophecy of Daniel was now over.

Daniel 8:17 – “Understand son of man, that the vision refers to the time
of the end.”

It
was in 1009, that the “Mad Caliph”, Al-Hakimsacked the pilgrimage hospice in Jerusalem and destroyed
the holiest site in Christendom, the Church
of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. This holy site was under
Al-Hakim’sShi’a Fatimid dynasty’s
control in Egypt. Since the 6th century,
the Church of the Holy Sepulcher had been under the Muslim control and
protected as a Christian holy site from destruction. In 966
CE, the roof and doors were burnt but it still remained
open to Christian pilgrims.

On October
18, 1009, the “Mad Caliph” completely destroyed the Church of the
Holy Sepulcher down to bedrock. Here were destroyedthree connecting
churches built around the hill identified by Helena, the motherof theRoman Emperor Constantinethe Great tobe thesite of
the Crucifixion of Christ. Around 380
CE these three churches were included in a great basilica
called the Martyrium, a colonnaded atrium called the Triporticosurrounding the “Rock of Calvary.”
A rotunda called the Anastasis
(“Resurrection”) was built over the burial cave that Helena and Macarius felt was the burial site of Jesus. The rock was cut
away and an enclosure encased the tomb that was called the Edicule,
a small building or shrine. It would be near the end of the 4th
century that the dome of the rotunda would complete the “Holy
Sepulchre”.

Twelve
years later (1021), Al-Hakim disappeared as he rode alone on a donkey
traveling to the Muqattam Mountain near Cairo. He was supposedly
eliminated by an assassin hired by his sister, Sitt al-Mulk.
Even today, the Druze believe that Caliph Al-Hakim was “hidden away
by God” and will return as the Mahdion the future day of Judgment and the Yaum
al-Qiyamah (literally "Day of the Resurrection")
at the time of the end.

The First
Christian Crusade

At
the beginning of the second millennium since the birth of Jesus,
a messianic revival was erupting in Europe. With
the destruction of Constantine’sChurch of the Holy Sepulchre
in 1009 by Caliph Al-Hakim, the Christian world in Europe went electric. The Jews were first blamed for the destruction of
the basilica. Quickly, anti-Semiticpersecution of the
Jews began to sweep Europe.

Within
forty years a series of small chapels were allowed to be reconstructed
by Constantine IX Monomachos in 1048 but
the formative mood in Europe was clearly synthesizing the environment
that would soon lead to theFirst Christian
Crusade. This crusade was clearly envisioned as an armed
pilgrimage under Godfrey de Bouillon, who became the first
Christian monarch of Jerusalem, not as a “king” but the Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri (“Protector of the Holy
Sepulchre”).

In the city of Jerusalem the Christians were forced to
wear, by the progressively paranoid Caliph of Cairo, wooden crosses that were a half a meter long and a half a meter wide
around their necks. In less than a century, by July 15, 1099, the Church of the
Holy Sepulcher was captured and in the control of theKnights Templars. By December 25, 1100,
Godfrey, who died either by an arrow in battle or poisoned by the emir of
Caesarea, had his brother, Baldwin I (1100-1118)
installed as the first Latin (Roman Catholic) king
of Jerusalem.

The
European mood of religious fervor exploded in 1095 in an
era of progressive religious piety. The Byzantine
emperor Alexius I, besieged by the Seljuk Turkspled for
help from his western Christian allies. Pope
Urban IIin the Council of Clermont (1095) sent the clarion
call throughout all the European Christian Catholic countries to
join in a military alliance against the infidel Turks. The reward
was a full penance (forgiveness for any sinful life) for
heaven.

In route
to the Holy Land, the crusaders met and defeated two large Turkish
armies at Dorylaium and Antioch. Continuing their march towards Jerusalem, the almost disseminated army was still able to storm the
city of Jerusalem by assault in 1099.One of
the most ignoble events in Christian history
occurred. The Christian Crusadersslaughtered the entire population of
Jerusalem, Jews and Muslims alike.

The
Muslim invasion came to Europe on the heels of a decaying Eastern
Roman Byzantine Empire at Constantinople in the east and the division
and breakdown of Charlemagne’s Carolingian Empire called the Holy Roman Empire (800-888 CE) in the west. The Christianization
of the Vikings, the Slavs and Magyars warriors who no longer
had lands to conquer affected the European continent as they now became
terrorists among their own people as lords and knights fighting
within multiple feudal territories.

The
papal inspired armies were like locusts
streaming
across the wilderness where the Muslims and the Jews had been living in
relative peaceful co-existence for centuries. Like a storm of predators, they invaded,neither
satisfied with raping and pillaging but in a genocide that murdered
both Jews and Muslims alike.Their quest was not a “Holy Land” but
a land devoid of non-Christian
presence. Out of the first wave of the Catholic Christian
invading forces into the Middle East there arose several small
Crusader states. These included:

The
first of the Crusader states was the County of Edessa
(1098-1150).

ThePrincipality of Antiochthen followed
(1098-1268).

The
third state of the Crusader states that were established
in the First Crusade was the County of Tripoli in Lebanon(1104) who conquered
the Islamic city of Tripoli in 1109 and lasted until 1288.

The
fourth and last of the First Crusader states was the Kingdom of Jerusalem that lasted until
1291 when the city of Acre fell to the Islamic forces of Saladin.
Under the banner of Jerusalem were also four siegneuries or
lordships that included:

The
Principality of Galilee

The
County
of Jaffa and Ascalon

The Lordship of Oultrejordain

The Lordship of Sidon

Also
the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, though
it originated before the onset of the crusades was granted by Pope
Innocent III the status of a kingdom and the French Lusignan dynasty
gave it a semi-westernized identity.

For
almost a half a century the Christians and the Muslims actually lived
in a relative peaceful co-existence. It was then when Bernard of Clairvaux began preaching to
agitate for a new crusade when the first crusader state of the County of Edessa was recaptured
by the Turks. The European Christian kings of Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germanyand many European
nobles responded and in the Second Christian
Crusade, they marched in 1147 towards the Holy Land. Since they traveled separately, each army was defeated separately
by the Seljuk Turks after being delayed by the Byzantine
emperor Manuel I Commenus before they crossed into Anatolia. With only remnants of their armies, both Louis VII and Conrad III
finally reached Jerusalem in 1148.

Once
in Jerusalem, the two kings were soon induced into another fateful
campaign against the Muslim people. It was a dream of King Baldwin III in Jerusalem and the Knights Templars
to go for the big prize. They wanted to take down the Emirs
of Damascus, the heart of the Sunni Muslim Seljuk Empire.

The
Haute Cour, the High Court or feudal
council of the Kingdom of Jerusalem met on June 24 in Acre with the greatest
assembly of kings and nobles in Jerusalem’s history. The two kings, Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany, were enticed by the idea
of making Damascus a Christian holy city like Jerusalem and Antioch. By July, 50,000 troops were assembled and marched around the Sea
of Galilee towards Damascus.

In
the city of Damascus, one of the friendliest Turkish Islamic
dynasties in the Middle East was in power. This was the Burid dynasty in Damascus.
They were allies with the Christian crusaders earlier when the Zengid dynasty sought to conquer Damascus in 1140.
The Islamic chronicler, Usamah ibn Munqidh, assisted, Mu'in ad-Din Unur, the Mameluk
acting as vizier for the young heir to the throne, Mujir ud-Din Abaq, in securing an alliance with
the Christian Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem against the Zengid
dynasty.

The
siege against Damascus proved to be a failure.
In turn, it led to the final conquest and capture of Damascus by
the Seljuk Turkish Zengid ruler of Aleppo, Nur ed-Din Mahmud, six
years later in 1154 CE. The Damascus Siege sealed the beginning of the end for the Christian
Crusaders in the Holy Land.

The
second son of the dynasty founder, Imad
ed-Din Zengi (Zengi), was called Nur
ed-Din. He was the heir to thethrone
of Aleppo and Edessa.Nur ed-Din went on to defeat Prince
Raymond of Antioch (1149), the County of Edessa to the west of
the Euphrates River(1150) and finally the city of Damascus,
the former capital of the Umayyad Caliphates of Damascus(1154).
The battle successes continued for Nur ed-Din. Raynald of
Chatillon, the Prince of Antioch was captured. Soon Nur ed-Din
began to compete with the King of Jerusalem Amalric
I for the prize; the control of the Fatimid
Caliphate in Egypt.

Edessa and the Mandylion, the Image of
Jesus

The
ancient city of Edessahad just been captured by
the Zengi, the Turkish atabeg in northern Syria of Mosul and Aleppo
on December 24, 1144 from the Crusaders.This city had
been part of the Crusader State of the County of
Edessa when the future Baldwin I, King of Jerusalem captured it
on 1098.Zengi was noweying Damascus. This Mesopotamian city
was felt by many to be the Ur of the Chaldeas where Abraham lived. This
was a “holy city” coveted by both the eastern Byzantine Roman and
the western Roman Christian Churches and now was in the possession
of the Turks.

Edessahad been coveted by the Byzantine
emperors since the 7th century when Romanus I Lecapenus, the
Caesar of the Byzantine Empire (920-944), after he usurped
the throne of Constantine VII in 920 CE, invaded Mesopotamia in 943
CE. He then besieged the city of Edessa.

The
price for his withdrawal, the Byzantine generalobtained
the “Holy Mandylion”, the prized
“holy towel”allegedly used by to wipe the face of Jesus
on the way to Golgotha. It was reputed that the “image of
Jesus” was imbedded on the towel. This unique relic
was reverently taken to Constantinople on August 16, 944 CE.(Documented in Weisliebersdorf, Christus und Apostelbilder
(Freiburg, 1902), and Dobschütz, Christusbilder (Leipzig, 1899).)

According
to Christian legend, King Abgar V of Edessa
wrote to Jesus asking Him to come to Edessa and cure him. This legend
was first documented by Eusebius of Caesarea in 340 CE
in the “Ecclesiastical History of the Church.”(1.13.5 and .22)Eusebius claimed that he had
translated it from a letter written in Syriac found in the
royal chancery documents. According to the ancient Christian legend,
the Apostle Thaddeus instead went to Edessa carrying with him the cloth with the facial imprint of Jesus on
it. When the king saw the image, he was miraculously healed.

The
Christian world had been shocked with the loss of this
ancient “holy city” of Edessa to the infidel Turks. It led to the clarion call for the
Second Christian Crusade. So the newly arrived European royal
monarchs and their French and German forces were now in the Holy Land . The young king of Jerusalem, Baldwin III wanted to impress
his famous European royal guests and with his invitation, they agreed
to the invasion of Damascus.

This
invasion into Syria was opposed by Baldwin III’smother,
Queen Melisende and other crusader states who wanted instead to capture
Aleppo, claiming that this was the best route to the recapture of
Edessa.

The
invasion against Damascus Syria led to a disastrous defeat at the
four days Siege of
Damascus in July 1148. Both of the
French and the German troops were lost. Now on the geo-political-religious
stage of world history, there rode forth a new anti-Christ
for the Christians and a messiah for
Muslims. The Jews were caught in between with their own messiahs
of Davidic birth arriving on the stage of Jewish history.

The general for Nur ed-Din, Shirkuh finally conquered Egypt in 1174. With Shirkuh’sdeath, the rule of Egypt went to his nephew,
thefamous Saladin.Saladin immediately began to resist and reject
the control of his ruling Zengid master, Nur ed-Din. This conflict
was exploding into a military confrontation in 1174
when heading to Egypt, Nur ed-Din unexpectedly died. Within nine
years, Saladin would head north and ended the Zengid dynasty in Damascus

Saladin (1138-March 4, 1193) or better known to his people as Salah
al-Din (Salahuddin
Ayyubi) was born to Najm ad-Din Ayyub,
the governor of Baalbek and part of the KurdishAyyubid
dynastic family that lived in the regions north of Baghdad, Iraq.

As
a Kurd of Northern Iraq, he was born in the region of Tikrit,
whose province is today named for him about 80 miles northwest of Baghdad, Iraq. The birth
town of Saladin is also known as the birth
town of the former President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. Both were types of ananti-Christ where Saddam Hussein felt that he was the reincarnation
of the ancient Babylonian conqueror of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar the Great.
Both were born in Tikrit; Saladin in 1138 and SaddamHussein
in 1937.

The
senior and most trusted members of the Iraqi government were members
of the Tikriti tribe called the “Al Bu Nasir” plus the “Chosen ones” of the Iraqi Republican Guard. It was about nine miles south of
Saddam’s
Palace in Tikrit outside the town of ad-Dawr, Saddam Hussein
was captured by members of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division
on December 13, 2003hiding in a camouflaged hole in the
ground.

The
First Christian Crusade into the Holy Land had brought about the fall
of Jerusalem in 1099 and the rise of the Crusader States in the Holy Land. The Second Christian Crusade now brought two of the greatest
monarchs in Europe, Louis VII of France and Conrad
III of Germany (1148) who were now plotting with the Latin
Crusader King Baldwin III in Jerusalem and the Knights Templars to
take down the youthful Emir of Burid dynasty in Damascus, Mujir ud-Din Abaq.They had formed a confederation
with the Crusader king of Jerusalem, Baldwin III and the Zengid campaign against
Damascus failed.

This
was the same prize that Saladin’s uncle had been eyeing with greed to
conquer. Nur ed-Din Mahmud had tried eight years earlier to topple
the Emirs of Damascus that resided in the former capital of the first
Umayyad
Sunni Caliphate in Damascus. In Damascus, the friendliest Turkish Islamic
dynasty in the Middle East was soon to be sabotaged by the Christian
Catholic king in Jerusalemand the newly arrived royal monarchs
from Europe in April 1148. 50,000 Catholic European
troops were sent against the city of Damascus.

To the crusaders, was not the city of Damascus a holy city for Christians just like Jerusalem and Antioch? In July 1148, the Christian armies assembled near Tiberius on
the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Marching around the sea they headed
to Damascus. They arrived on July 23 and laid siege to Damascus. By
July 28, the forces of Conrad had
already begun in retreat to Jerusalem as Nur ed-Din again arrived on the
scene with his armies. Soon they all retreated.

The
siege against Damascus proved to be a failure
and the once friendly rulers in Damascusno longer trusted the Christian crusader rulers. This in turn led
to the final conquest and capture of Damascus by the Seljuk Turkish Zengid ruler of Aleppo, Nur ed-Din Mahmud, six years later in 1154 CE. The lack of integrity of the King of Jerusalem and the Crusaders,
the Damascus Siege sealed the beginning
of the end for the Christian
Crusaders in the Holy Land.

Across
the Lebanese Mountains from Damascus lay the city of Baalbek, Lebanon. Saladin, the son of the area’s governorwatched with interest
the ebb and flow of this great arena of Christian-Islamic conflict. From
his vantage point near the base of the majestic Herman Mountain, Saladin could observe as the great warriors of the age were battling
for control of the city of Jerusalem. One could always wonder what thoughts
were moving through the young mind of Saladin as he lived
in the mountain valleys in Lebanon. Here he was looking at
the archeological relics of ancient Roman temples that were built
over more ancient megalithic (mega-stones) structures with hewn foundational
pillars of undescribable size. They appeared to have been built
in the ages of the mythical past when there were “giants on the
earth…the mighty men who were of old, men of renown”,
according the legends and histories of his ancestral fathers,
Abraham and Ishmael.(Genesis 6:4)

As Saladin
listened to the stories of the Crusader invasions, the battles
for power and control of the Holy Land by the papal
crusaders, his heart would quicken as the battle of the gods
appeared to be playing out in front of his eyes. It would be only thirty
three years later in 1187 that Saladin would be the victor that
would conquer Jerusalem. He would drive out the Crusader
kings of Jerusalem.

When
the Nur ed-Din established his court in Damascus, the Kurdish
son of the governor of Baalbek Lebanon, was sent to the court of
Nur ed-Din for ten years. There he studied Sunni theology
and mastered the art of Islamic military strategy by his uncle
Shirkuh, Nur ad-Din’s lieutenant.

Later Saladin would accompany his uncle as
they took down the Shi’ite Fatimid Dynasty in Egypt.

The
only Shi’a Caliphate in history was toppled. Fifteen yearsafter the
Siege of Damascus, Saladin was now the Vizier of Egypt (1169). The rest
is history. Eighteen years after the Siege of Damascus, on September 20, 1187, Jerusalem fell
in the Siege
of Jerusalemafter the successful Battle of Hattin against the
Crusaders.

The Military
Genius of Saladin

Saladin the Great was now the greatest military leader in
the Middle East. The Christian Crusader kings who in their Christian
messianic zeal sought to destroy the Islamic dynasties nearby
were now seeking to wrestle control of Palestine and Jerusalem away from the hands of Saladin. He was now the “infidel” and
the ruler and founder of the Sunni Muslim Ayyubid Dynasty out
of Egypt.

Saladin whose name meant “The
Righteousness of Faith” was honored by both Christian and
Muslims for his political leadership, military prowess and his
merciful nature to his enemies in his numerous battles with the
Christian Crusaders. Throughout these battles he interacted in the
Middle East with Conrad of Montferrat ruler of Tyre, Guy of Lusignan, the King of Jerusalem and Queen Sibylla of Jerusalem
whom he captured and later sent both of them to their freedom
to Tyre. They in turn when rebuffed by Conradat Tyre went on to besiege Acre at the Siege of Acre. Later he would battle
with Richard the Lionhearted of England and in turn seek to create a
dynastic marriage with that European monarch.

The
loss of Jerusalem and almost every Crusader cityprompted
the Roman Catholic pontiff to mount the Third
Crusade with a special Saladin “tithe.”This tithe was instituted by Pope Gregory VIII with the papal
bull called the Audita tremendi, on October 29, 1187. Fronting this Third Crusade was King
Richard I (the Lionhearted) of Englandwho met Saladin the Great at
the Battle of Arsuf on September 7, 1191. Here were two of
the greatest warriors of medieval chivalry, one was Christian and
the other was Islamic, both involved in one of the strangest of
Middle Eastern wars and romances.

In one
battle King Richard was wounded and the personal Muslim physician of
Saladin was sent to his aid. This was a signal favor as the world’s
best physicians in the West were Muslim trained. Later at Arsuf,
King Richard lost his horse and two fresh horses were sent by Saladin
for his replacement. The friendship of Saladin and King Richard
I of England became so close that the sister of King Richard,
Joan, was considered in marriage to the brother of Saladin, al-Adil,
as a dynastic peace marriage.The city
of Jerusalem was to be their dowry.Religious considerations prevented
such a royal and practical peace accord as both Joan and al-Adil were
against the marriage.

Saladin
in history has taken several directions by historical scholarship. The prominent
historical analysis places Saladin as a moral and virtuous Islamic
warrior in an era of European chivalry who instituted a revival
of Orthodox Islam as a promoter and defender of
mystical Islamic Sufism idealism which his government supported.

Saladin
instead,
according to some scholars, was ruthless, militaristic and had
considerable political ambitions. The final result was the destruction
of the Shi’a Caliphate of the Fatimads in Egypt, the resurrection
of his own Sunni Kurdish Ayyubic family dynasty in Egypt while at the same time defending the Muslim homeland by driving out the European
Crusader kings from Jerusalem in 1187.

Saladin was able to unite the
Islamic factions under the Sunni Caliphate of Baghdad as he confronted
the Latin kingdom in Jerusalem. At the same time, he was endangered
and threatened by the supporters of his former master, Nur ad-Din,
the last of the Zangid dynasty in Damascus. While the Saladin legend
in Christian history assumes an overwhelming presence in Crusader
history, it was probably only a subordinate role in the whole
militaristic and expansionistic dynastic ambitions of Saladin: the suppression
of the Zangid princes in Damascus, and
the exploitation of the Shi’a Fatimid
Caliphate in Egypt against the European
invasion of the Crusaders kings in the Holy Land and Jerusalem.

Saladin
had a unique advantage of growing up in the one of the most mysterious
and exotic places on this earth. Here in a land that was a “time
tunnel” to the past, Saladin observed the dynamics of the Kings
of Jerusalem, the Emir of Damascus and the Zengid rulers
fighting over the city ofDamascus from his vantage
point of nearby Baalbek, Lebanon. Here his father was the Syrian
governor of the region.

The
Emir of Damascus was an ally and friend of the Kings of Jerusalem. He had a peace treaty during the reign of King Fulk I of Jerusalem. The main purpose for this treaty was to defend Damascus
against the Turkish advances of Zengi and his son and successor
Nur ad-Din. Into this region arrived the crusading Kings, Louis
VII of France and Conrad III of Germany to Acre in 1148.
As we observe these events, we will remind ourselves of the prophecies
of Assyria, Babylon, Persia and Rome are mini-pictures that will
be played out in the “Last Days” since the fall of Jerusalem
to the Roman armies of Hadrian and the “Time of the End” since
the rise of the last Kingdom of Israel
before the coming of the Messiah.

To these
two kings, from the Catholic heartland of France and Germany,
had most of their armies wiped out by the Seljuk Turks in route
to the Holy Land. They wanted to invade Damascus
because it was seen as an easy target and a good military coup to
prompt up their flagging reputation as encouraged by the
young King Baldwin III (1131-1162) the eldest
son of King Fulk I of Jerusalem. The queen
regent, Melisende of Jerusalem, the mother of King Baldwin opposed the Damascus campaign.

Living
in the court
of Nur ad-Din (Nureddin),Saladin developed his military skills
in campaigns against the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt. What is of
interest, even though Saladin was a student of Sunni theology and a master
of Islamic military war, he was a secret follower of the Ismaili branch of Shi’a Islam.

Out
of the political unrest in Egypt,Saladin soon
became vizier of Egypt in 1169 and installed Sunni Ayyubid dynasty of Egypt. He now had the responsibility
to defend Egypt against the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem of Almeric I, the King of Jerusalem (1162-1174),the
second son of Melisende of Jerusalem. Melisende
was the daughter of King Baldwin II of Bourcq,the King of Jerusalem (1118-1131). She ruled as a co-regent with her husband, King Fulk I the King of Jerusalem (1131-1191)and former Count of Anjoy.

Here
nestled in the region of the Ante-Lebanon mountains, the region
of Baalbek almost nine centuries later would became international
news as one of the major Hezbollah military sites in the Lebanese Beqaa Valley during the Israeli-Hezbollah War in the summer of 2006.
Here in this same region, in the fall of 2006, the armies of
the European Union Europe’s military called NATO, guided by the Vatican-inspired “Rome Peace Accord” between Hezbollah
and Israel, would return again as the Crusading armies of the Vatican. This time they were to be led by the Nation of Italy, the
throne of the Vatican and the heartland of Catholic Europe, the Nations
ofFrance and Germany. This time these armies were posed
as international “peace-keepers” for the United Nations. As
we watch closer into the coming future, we may see the rise
of theFourth Reich, the “leopard”body of the Sea Beast of Revelation 13 that was first created
in the First Reich of Germany, the reign
of the Holy Roman
Emperor Frederick II who was also the King of Jerusalem (1225-1230).

Revelation 13:2 – “Now the beast which I
saw was like a leopard…”

Long
a bastion of terrorism in the Middle East, Baalbek’s secret
wonders are the ancient remains of one of the most
incredible wonders of the ancient archeological world. In the surrounding
landscape of Saladin’s Lebanese home were the relics of an ancient
world more marvelous in grandeur than the Islamic caliphate
and Seljuk Turk’s monumental buildings.

Forty-four
miles east of Beirut, a cluster of ruins and catacombs 2,500 feet on each
side house one of the largest stone structures in the world. It dates modestly
back to the 3rd century BCE and appears to be
associated with the same traditions of the biblical Semitic high
places of worship. The acropolis at Baalbek was littered
with megalithic stones of immeasurable size. Here are ancient
sculpted foundation stones so large that the largest crane in
the modern world would be challenged to either lift or
transport. Here were the remains of a society so ancient that
they depicted the imagery of the battles between angels and
demons.

On
the top was a Roman templededicated to Jupiter and
Venus. It was built in the years of the Roman Emperor Nero
(37-68 CE). The entire temple structure was finally enclosed by
Roman Emperor Constantine the Great at the same time his mother, Helena, was building
the holy sites for Christianity in the region of Jerusalem.

These
temple structures were actually built over more ancient temples
below that were dedicated to the Semitic divinities of the god Baal
and his goddess Astarte, the Canaanite cults of prostitution and sacred
orgies. Some archeologists suggest that it may have been built on
an even more ancient Sun temple sites. During the Hellenistic era(331-64 BCE), the Greeks called the god of Baalbek the “sun
god” and the city of Baalbek was called Heliopolis or the City of
the Sun.

Largely
destroyed in an earthquake in 1759, the foundation of the entire temple cluster
was built with ancient technologies used in a more ancient
world of earthquakes and catastrophes. One part of the
enclosure wall was composed of the largest hewn
stones in the world that were formed in a cataclysmic world
that rend the foundations of the entire world. It was built so
that neither the platform nor walls would crumble or shift.

At
the “Podium” of the Roman temple were three of the largest
hewn stones in the world. Called the “Trilithon”,
each megalithic stone was moved from a nearby quarryten
minutes walking distance. Each stone, weighing over 800 tons, was lifted
twenty feet up upon a platform and meticulously placed together in perfect
alignment.

To
the south, in the same abandoned stone quarry, was the largest
dressed or carved stone in the world. It is called the famous “Stone of the South.”This one stone weighs an estimated
1,200 tons. With visions
of ancient grandeur surrounding him and the reality of the
fear of being culturally imprisoned by the Christian Crusaders,
Saladin began to undergo a psychological and religious paradigm
shift in his life.

As
the end of 2006 was heralded with the final fall of the First Babylon we witnessed again the ancient Persian revenge upon the son,
who imaged that he was the reincarnated
Nebuchadnezzar of the New Middle East. The world
witnessed the violent hanging of Saddam Hussein as the final
revenge by the Shi’ite Iraqi leadership in league with their Shi’ite
guardians in the Ayatollah led Iran (ancient Persia). Yet the global
picture represents a different view of the final control of this
planet as soon ancient Persia and her global supporters will
be swallowed up by the Greco-Roman world of the western
internationalists and transnationalists of the Golden Internationale.
As role of ancient Baalbek in the final stages of this earth’s
political control was stated succinctly by Sorcha Faal in the
article, “Death
of Saddam Tyrant presages Catastrophic World End:”

What Does It Mean – “…The violent execution
death of Saddam occurring on December 30, 2006, one day
short of the 7th Year of the accession to power of
our Russian Leader Vladimir Putin on December 31, 1999; with the ‘Great
Eagle’ of the United States in control of the ancient Babylon ‘Gate’; with the military
forces of the Western World continuing to flood into, and around,
the ancient
Roman City Of The Sun, Baalbeck, Lebanon; the continued Western World Military hold
upon the ancient
Celtic mystical places in Slovenia(former Yugoslavian Region) and the ancient Persian Empire
region
of Bactria (Afghanistan) the center from which the Mithraism cult had
as its beginnings and the Western World control of the Sinai Peninsula, and, now, with the death
of Saddam being completed, the Western World’s hold upon the ancient
‘heartbeat’ of this Earth is now complete.”

Unfolding
in front of Saladin’s eyes was one of the greatest geo-political dramas in Christian
and Islamic history. It was only a little over a hundred years prior
that the millennial messianic fever was sweeping Europe since the
death of the Christian messiah, Jesus of Nazareth in 30 CE.

It
has been accepted by many historians that by the arrival of
the 2nd century CE, the Christian messianic passion also affected
the Muslims and the Jews in Palestine and the
greater Middle East. The Muslims also accepted the life
and ministry of Jesus as a Prophet of Israel. Yet, Jesus was to become
their future Islamic messiah, Isis ben Miriam (Jesus the son of Mary). The messianic
fever was also sweeping the Jewish homelands as it had been one
thousand years since the fall of Jerusalem. The messianic call to return
to the Land of Israel was beginning to resound around Europe and across
the Middle East.

Today
we witness,
with the entrance of the 3rd millennium after the birth of
Yahshua (Jesus):

The
eruption of the Jewish expectations for
the arrival of the Messiah ben Yosef
that will lead the Jewish people in the days before the coming
of the Messiah ben David who will
bring forth the messianic reign of a thousand years.

A
messianic movement within fundamentalist Islam whose hearts are burning with the passion
like that of the Iranian President Ahmadinejad for the arrival
of the Islamic Mahdi. They feel this
era will herald the coming of the Islamic
Messiah Isis ben Miriam (Jesus son of Mary).

The
expectations of the Christian world anticipating the return
of their Messiah, Jesus son of Davidas the King of kings and Lord of lords. This will be the same
prince of the House of David that was born in the
first century in Bethlehemthe city of David, as Yahshua haMaschiachben Yosef (Jesus the Messiah, son of Joseph).

Here
we discover the rise ofseven
messianic claimants that sought to become the messiah for
the Jews. David Hughes in his insightful
manuscript on the genealogies of the Dynastic Lineage
of David and Jerry Rabow in his book, “50 Jewish Messiahs” provide us with the following
documentation:

Solomon “Rashi” of Troyes France became a Davidic
claimant in 1087 as a famous Jewish rabbi with dynastic
claims to the House of David.

Ibn Ayre was a reluctantJewish
prince at Cordoba, Spain in 1100 of Davidic roots
who became the focus of Jewish Spanish leaders who was being promoted
as a candidate to be the messianic leader of the Jews. Fearing
Muslim retaliation, the Jewish community leaders brought Ibn
Ayre before the synagogue council where he was found guilty
for failing to instruct his disciples that they were acting
in error. There he was flogged before the Spanish public,
fined and then excommunicated from the synagogue.

Moshe al-Dar’l was a Spaniard that
went to Fez, Morocco in 1120 and attracted a lot
of attention before the Jewish community leaders for his predictions
that the era of the messiah was about to dawn at the eve
of the next Passover. At that time he would lead the Jews
back to Palestine. Before that happened, Moshe came
to the attention of the Muslim authorities for swindling many of
the local population when he disappeared in 1127 to regions
unknown. (Recorded by the Jewish sage Maimonides in his Letter
to Yemen)

David Alroy was a messianic claimant between the years
of 1125-1147 with his base of operations in the city of Amadia, Kurdistan. Both his father and grandfather, Shlomo al-Duji, were
leaders of a Jewish reclamation organization to assist Jews in returning
to Palestine. When David took over the organization as its third
director, he declared that he would complete his father’s mission
and lead the Jews to retake Palestine for the Jewish people with
a military force.

It was in the year of 1147; David Alroy made
the proclamation that he was the “King of the Jews” at Babylon. This proclamation came to the attention to the Persian ShahMu'iz
ud-Dīn Ahmad-e Sanjar (1118-1153) in 1087 at his capital
in Khorasan, Persia. This Persian shah was the son of
Malik Shah I from the golden age of the “Great Seljuk” whom
the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad called “The Sultan of the East and the
West.” Shah Mu’izthreatened to kill all the Jews in the realm
of the Seljuq dynasty unless Alroy was eliminated.

This threat to the Jews was almost as serious
as existed in the days of Queen Esther from the First Persian Empire. The notification of the threat was taken to the neighboring Turkish
ruler, Sultan Zun al-Din, a known friend of the Jews. He knew that only
the death of Alroy would spare the Jewish people from a Persian
genocide.

It was the Sultan who gave Alroy’s father-in-law
10,000 pieces of gold and when Alroy became drunk at a banquet to
his honor, he murdered him later in his sleep. Alroy’s head was
cut off and sent to the Seljuk Sultan. The threat to the Jews was
not over though until the Jewish leaders paid the Shah a
hundred talents of gold.

The descendants of Alroy’s followers became
known as the Menahemites from his father’s name, Menahem, and founder
of the family fortune. [First published by Benjamin of Tudelo in his “Book of
Travels” (Sefer-ha-Massalot)]

Yosef “Ha-Nasi”was a prince of the House
of Bostanai the ruling Exilarch House at Baghdad during
an era when the Baghdadi Patriarchate was moved to Aleppo, Syria. The Jewish people there recognized him as their
“prince” or “nasi.”

According to Hughes, a new Jewish Davidic
dynasty was founded within the Palestinian “Nesi’im” about
the same time that Saladin the Great overthrew the Crusader
State of Jerusalem at the Battle of Hattin in 1187.

Abraham Abulafia was the son of the Jewish Exilarch
Prince Samuel, the son of the 64th Exilarch
Daniel III. He proclaimed that he had three divine calls:

The
first call came in 1271 at Barcelona, Spain about which he wrote about his divine vision when he traveled to find
the Sambatyon Riversouth of the Holy Land. This was published
in a book in Urbino, Italy in 1279.

The
second call came by vision in 1280 at Capua, Italy that instructed him to make an appointment with
Pope Nicholas III and convert him to Judaism.

Abraham Abulafia did have an audience with Pope
Nicholas III who afterwards ordered that Abulafia be imprisoned
and burned at the stake. Yet three days later (August 22,1280), Pope
Nicholas was dead as a victim of the plague. The papal
authorities saw with alarm the “divine intervention” and the pope’s
execution order for Abulafia was rescinded.

His
third call came in his most elevating vision that occurred
at Messina, Sicily in 1284 that Abraham would be the
messiah and lead the Jews to Jerusalem.

After this time, he set himself forth
as the “Messiah” or the “royal Davidic heir” to the future
messianic era of David, son of David. The Jewish scholars have also
noted that the birth date of Abraham Abulafia (1240 CE) was the 5000th
year in the Jewish calendar that starts its calendar with the
Creation of Adam.

During that time, a prophecy went out that the
Jewish messianic kingdom would be established on earth in 1290 CE,
the first Jubilee Year (fifty years) after the Year 5000. The rabbis
of his day denounced Abulafia so strongly that he withdrew his
messianic claims.

It was in 1282, a following of European
Jews along with Abraham determined to travel to Palestine in a
“crusade” to retake Jerusalem. As Jerry Rabow wrote in “50
Jewish Messiahs”:

Jerry Rabow – “His followers in the 1280s prepared
themselves for the Return to Jerusalem in the usual fashion – winding
up or abandoning their business, selling their property,
and preparing their wardrobe.” (page 48)

This plot came to the attention of the King
of Italy and Abraham was arrested and exiled to Comino
on the Isle of Malta (1284) where he wrote books of Jewish mysticism until
he died as a prisoner seven years later (1291),one year
after the “Jubilee Year.”

Nissim ben Abraham was called the “prophet of Avila” who made his messianic claims in 1295 at the Castle of Avila in Spain.
Claiming to be illiterate, the “Prophet” claimed that an angel
dictated to him a book of mystical wisdom. This book was
examined by a Jewish scholar called Rabbi Adret who proclaimed
that it was a compilation of modern Christian works of prophecy.

Yet the great following in Barcelona Spain had
a spectacular ending similar to the failed October 22, 1844
prediction that Jesus the Messiah was returning during the Millerite
Movement and the Great Christian Awakening that occurred all
over the Eastern Seaboard of the infant republic of the United
States. As reported in “50 Jewish Messiahs:”

Jerry Rabow – “When the prophet of Avila predicted the specific day for the Redemption (on the last day of
the Hebrew month of Tammuz 1295), the people believed. In anticipation
of the Messiah’s appearance, the Jews of the area fasted and prayed. They finally gathered in their synagogues
on the announced day, dressed in white gowns, ready to hear the blast of the ram’s
horn (shofar) that legend says will announce the
Messiah’s Coming.

No ram’s horn was heard.No Messiah
appeared. The people were devastated, and their resulting
despair drove so many Jews to convert to Christianity that
the continuity of the entire Jewish community in Castilewas threatened. (page 49, quoting Yitzhak Baer in the History of
the Jews)

When none of his predictions came to pass,
many of the disillusioned Jews converted to Christianityrather
than return to Jerusalem. Jewish Messiahs would come and go
but the millennial clustering of claimants as the Jewish messiah
was soon over.

We
now see the young Saladin, whose father, of Kurdish descent, was
the governor of Baalbek Lebanon who was of common descent as Zengi,
the Kurdish ruler in Mosul and Aleppo who had just captured the
Crusader city of Edessa. Zengi, who came to the rescue ofDamascus by the plea from the Emir of Damascus, created a stalemate
that resulted in the failed Siege of Damascus in 1148 by the
Christian Crusaders Kings Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany.
By 1154, the city of Damascus was formally given to the son
of Zengi, Nur ad-Din and the Zengi Dynasty of Damascus began.

What
is now known, Saladin was the nephew of the general of Nur ad-Din. He soon
seized Egypt in 1169 and formed the Sunni
Ayyubid Dynasty of Egypt. The Shi’ite
Fatimid Dynasty in Egyptended that began in 910 CE
with the founder, Said ibn Husayn (Abū
Muḥammad ˤAbdu
l-Lāh (ˤUbaydu
l-Lāh) al-Mahdī bi'llāh - 910-934).

With
the end of the only recognized Shi’ite Caliphate in Islamic history, the
Fatimid Shi’ite Caliphate in Cairo, the last and only caliphate whose
rulers were descendants of the Prophet Muhammad was destroyed. All
the hopes and the millennialaspirations of the Shi’ite
Muslims for the coming of the Shi’ite messianic Madhi (Hidden
Messiah) and the future Islamic messiah, Isis ben Miriam,
were destroyed with it. The last of this genealogical
legacy is found today with the Ismaili sect of Shi’ite Islam
in the reign of the 49th Aga Khan, His
Highness Prince Karīm al-Ḥussaynī
Āgā Khān IV.

The
Shi’ite Fatimid dynasty in Cairo Egypt was recognized by most scholars as the only major Shi’ite Caliphate in
Islam whose rulers were descendants of the Prophet Mohammad.
The exception to this was the Shi’a
Safavid Dynasty (1501-1736) in Iran whose genealogical roots
were linked to the daughter of the last king of the Second Persian
Empire, This dynasty pre-staged the modern attempt of the
current Ayatollah regime in Iran to re-establish a Shi’ite Caliphate
in Iran linked to the descendants of the Prophet
Mohammed.

Said ibn Husayn, the first Imam of the Fatimid dynasty, claimed that
his genealogic origins went back to Fatimah
Zahra, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammed who was married
to the Prophet’s cousin, Ali
ibn Abu Talib. Imam Ali was recognized to be the 1st
Imam of the Shi’as and respected as the 4th Caliph because
he belonged to the household of the Prophet
Muhammad, the Ahl al-Bayt
and was also one of Muhammed’s companions.

This
genealogical Shia descent was not universally accepted by all Muslims.
Some claim “Said” was an imposter and this fact was bolstered by
a document sent out by the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad, signed by
both Shi’a and Sunni scholars that Said ibn Husayn descent came
from Daysan the heretic, rather than the
daughter of the Prophet, Fatimah.

With
Saladin as the power force in Egypt, when Nur ad-Din in Damascus died in 1174, Saladin became the Sultan of
Egypt. Firsthe declared independence from the Seljuk Turks,
officially founded the Ayydbid Dynasty, restored Sunnism to Egypt
and began his military march of dynastic expansion. Second, he moved against smaller Islamic
states by moving down the Red Sea to Yemen and became in Sunni
Orthodoxy a Waliullah, a “friend of God”.Thirdly, he consolidated his
control in Egypt, moved upward to the land of his mentors and seized
Damascus from Ismail, the son of Nur ed-Din. Then
Fourth, he moved to the interior
of Syria in northern Iraq near his homeland. Finally the Fifth, after destroying the famished
Crusader army in theBattle of Hattin,Saladinentered the city of Jerusalem as victor in 1187.

One
of Saladin’s last diplomatic moves was signing a treaty with Richard I
of England that restored Crusader control to the coastal
strip from Ascalon to Antioch, Syria. At its peak, the Sunni
Ayyubid Dynasty of Saladin extended from Egypt to Syria, down to Diyar
Bakr, Mecca, the Hejaz, Yemen and north to Iraq.

Al-Adil,
Saladin’s brother, (Abu-Bakr Malik Al-Adil I), called Saphadin (1145-1218) was an Ayyubid-Egyptian
general and ruler. Supporting his brother Saladin in many campaigns,
he eventually became the governor of Aleppo (1183-1186), administrator
of Egypt during the Third Crusade (1186-1192), governor of
Damascus. He eventually was proclaimedSultan over Egypt and Syria for over twenty years. During
those years he sought to promote trade and good international
relations with the Christian Crusader states (1200-1217).

Yet
when al-Adil heard of the Fifth Crusade at the age of 72
he mounted a defense of Egypt and Palestine against the Crusaders
seeking to take
the town of Damietta. Interestingly it was a subordinate of the
general of that siege, Pelagius of Albano, called Francis of Assisi, the founder of
the Franciscan Order (1209) who sought to negotiate a failed peace treaty
between the Christians and the Muslims.

Sultan
Al-Adil, the brother to Saladin, was succeeded by his son Malik Al-Kamil (al-Kamil Muhammad al-Malik (died in 1238)as the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt. While Al-Kamil was praised
by his Islamic contemporaries for defeatingtwo crusader
invasions, he has been blamed severely by the Muslims for returning
Jerusalem to the control of the Catholic Christians.

On February
2005, BibleSearchers Reflection’s posted an article titled, “The Vatican
Seeks to Claim its Own – The Church with the Upper Room.” In this era
of seeking peace in the Middle East, we learned of the German
influence by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (1220-1250) in obtaining peace
in the Middle East between the Christian Crusader king by signing
a peace accord with Saladin’s nephew, Malik
Al-Kamil, the Ayyubid Sultan of Egypt.

BibleSearchers Reflections - “Our interest and focus into the life of
King Frederick II is predominately centered on Jerusalem and the Holy
Land. Officially he was known as the Holy
Roman Emperor Frederick II (1220-1250) of the Royal House of Hohenstaufen,
King of Sicily (1198-1250), King of Cyprus and Jerusalem, Pretender
to the King of the Romans from 1215, and King of Germany. Born on
December 26, 1194 to the Holy Roman Emperor
Henry VIand Constance the Queen of Sicily, he died on December
13, 1250 and his body remains are in the Cathedral
of Palermo. A Catholic by
birth, he was frequently at war with the Papal States, excommunicated
twice and once called the Anti-Christ by Pope Gregory IX.

A rocky road with Rome is the best
description of Frederick II mainly because his reign and life shone so much
brighter than the papal fathers. Speaker of nine languages,
literate in seven, a patron of science and all the early era of the
enlightenment, an advance student of economics and known in his
own time as the Stupor mundi (“wonder of the world”).

The imperial power of Charlemagne reached
its apex as the Holy Roman Empire, in essence the First Reich of Germany…The Holy Roman Empire of Germany
went from the 800 CE to August 6, 1806 when Francis II, as the last
ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, known as Francis von Habsburg or Franz
I of Austriaabdicated and the Empire was disbanded.

A thousand years of
reign, the First Reich never had a more brilliant ruler and leader,
except his forefather Charlemagne, than King Frederick II.
Many of his faithful followers felt he would rise again at a second coming
and rule a 1000 years in a futureReich on earth. The revived Second Reichcame in 1871 by the German family of the Hohenzollern.

In 1225, Frederick II married Yolande of Jerusalem with the blessing of
Pope Honorius III. It was the goal of the pope to connect the powerful
presence ofEmperor Frederick II to the Sixth
Crusade.

Yolande was the daughter of John of Brienne, the King of
Jerusalem(1148-1237) andMaria of
Montferrat, who was the daughter of Conrad of Montferrat
and heiress on the death ofAmalric IIto the throne
of the kingdom ofJerusalem.The regency of the throne
of Jerusalem passed from John of Brienne
upon the demand of Frederick II to serve also a
regent for their son,Conrad IV of Germanywhen Yolande of Jerusalem, his wife died…

Strangely enough, such a remarkable
figure as Frederick II was, he was not the iconic figure of a spiritual
leader. Predominately a religious sceptic, he denounced
Moses, Jesus and Muhammad as frauds and delighted to utter blasphemies,
mocking the sacraments of the Catholic Christian faith. As such,
his shocking and scandalous behavior earned him his disfavor with the Roman
pontiffs and even the Muslims disliked the “Christian” who was not a
Christian.

With the blessings of Pope Gregory IX and now defacto
king of Jerusalem by his marriage toYolande
of Jerusalem, heiress to the kingdom of Jerusalem,King
Frederick II was excommunicated by
Gregory IX in 1227 because of the delays in the crusades. This
came in part because his kingdom was in the midst of an epidemic.

The crusade finally did begin in 1228,
now by an excommunicated king that further rubbed the pontiff in Rome by its provocation for the Catholic Church did not receive the
honor of the crusade. As such, Frederick IIreceived
a second excommunication. Powerful players do not like to
share power.

The road to Jerusalem did not come by
the force of arms but by the negotiated restitution of the
city of Jerusalem, Nazareth and Bethlehem to King Frederick II by Sultan Al-Kamil, the Ayyubid ruler of the region. There were reasons for this negotiation. The Sultan
was nervous about a possible war with his Syrian and Mesopotamian enemies
and did not need any troubles with the Christians. The crusade ended
in a truce with the Pope and Frederick received his coronation as
the King of Jerusalemon
March 18, 1229. He was technically not the king but regentto the throne of Jerusalem for his infant sonConrad IVwas the rightful
heir to the kingdom, as his mother, Yolande of Jerusalem had
died.

Frederick II was now
married to his third wife, Isabella of England. This King of Jerusalem was to be short lived as part of the barons under the leadership
ofJohn of Ibelin, Lord of Beirutrebelled. By 1230, the viceroy left in Jerusalem by Frederick’s absence was forced to leave Acre, the capital. It was razed
to the ground by Sultan Malik al-Muattam. By 1244, Jerusalem was now
taken from the influence of the Papal power until today.”

Al-Kamil, the nephew of Saladin, also honored
the type of chivalry his uncle displayed in battle. He sought accommodation
with his Christian “enemies”. Soon after his defense of Damietta against the Fifth Crusade, his father died and he became the new
sultan of Egypt. The Coptic Christians quickly revolted, probably
in league and defense of the Crusaders, and he almost lost his kingdom.
While he was contemplating fleeing to Yemen, his brother, Al-Mu'azzam, who was the governor
of Damascus put down the conspiracy. In 1250, the last Ayyubid
Sultan of Egypt, Turanshah, was assassinated
and a Mamluk slave, General Aibek founded the Bahri dynasty. By 1291,
the Christian political influence in the Middle East ended. The day of
the Mongolian influence had just begun. It was time to finish
the dream of a unified world empire of Genghis Khan. What
did happen would forever alter the geo-politics of the
world, in Europe, the Middle East and Asia,clear to
the time of the end.

History predominately taken from the Free Internet Encyclopedia
Wikipedia

Message from BibleSearchers

BibleSearchers
scans the world for information that has relevance on the time of the
end. It is our prayer that this will allow the believers in the Almighty
One of Israel to “watch and be ready”. Our readiness has nothing to do
trying to halt the progression of evil on our planet earth. In our
readiness, we seek to be prepared for the coming of the Messiah of Israel so
that goodness and evil will be manifested in its fullest. Our preparation
is a pathway of spiritual readiness for a world of peace. Our defender is
the Lord of hosts. The time of the end suggests that the Eternal One of Israel’s
intent is to close out this chapter of earth’s history so that the perpetrators
of evil, those that seek power, greed and control, will be eliminated from this
planet earth. The wars of the heavens are being played out on this planet
earth and humans will live through it to testify of the might, power, justice
and the love of the God of Israel. In a world of corruption and
disinformation, we cannot always know what the historical truth is and who is
promoting evil or mis-information. We cannot guarantee our sources but we
will always seek to portray trends that can be validated in the Torah and the
testimony of the prophets of the Old and the New Testament.

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